Well it is an epic day! We have Virtual Boy rerecording! To watch the movie you need the
VBjin emulator.
Streaming links:
(removed)
The platform
Virtual Boy Wario Land is one of the few releases for the Virtual Boy platform. Arguably Nintendo's biggest flop the Virtual Boy sold it as a "Virtual reality" experience using goggles that sent separate video streams to each eye to create a parallax effect. Unfortunately the seizure inducing red monochrome, the awkward interface, and lack of a virtual reality experience resulted in a less than positve consumer response
The game & movie
Virtual Boy Wario Land was a platformer released for the Virtual Boy system in 1995. The main objective of the game is to traverse the 14 levels. Each level has a key you must find in order to open up the next level. There are treasures hidden along the way. This TASes gets no treasures and thus achieves the "bad ending".
This game offers a rich variety of movements and power-ups that give great TASing possibilities.
Significant Moves:
Running using the L or R buttons: the same speed as Barging
Barging: A nice move that is faster than walking, but causes Wario to bounce off walls and enemies
Bull Barging: With the bull upgrade, barging is significantly faster
Flying: Slow speed but very useful
Fly bull barging: When you have the bull and eagle upgrades, you can fly at bull barging speed, very useful
Tricks:
Alternating L and R quickly stops momentum, this can be used for quick turn arounds
While Bull charge flying, tapping the jump button allows him to do a jumping bull charge. This can be exploited to do a double jump and reach areas that shouldn't be possible (such as getting the key early in Level 13).
Faster swimming - This makes the swimming level look drunk. When swimming, Wario has a pushing forward, pulling back pattern. Hitting into things at the peak of the forward momentum can cancel out the pulling back momentum. The result is drunk, but it saves time. Eh, I hope that made sense.
Frame rule:
Level 13 is the biggest frame rule in TAS history, 1500 frames! That is the interval that the clock is on that gives the key. I get there about 600 frames into the frame rule and thus have 900 to kill. The result is rather unelegant time killing.
Categories
Emulator used: VBjin
Bad ending (any%)
Genre: platform
Suggested Screenshots
Thanks
paul_t for putting together VBjin
sgrunt for his awesome encode
Enjoy!
Baxter: Accepting this first Virtual Boy TAS, it got a good viewer response.
Uh? The game had music. It was just a whole bunch of variations on the same theme. They did the same thing for Super Mario Land 2.
Also, I've watched this now (without using glasses), and it was actually kinda neat seeing things separate as they moved away and combine as they moved towards. The gameplay was also quite decent. Yes vote.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
We discussed the possibility of Amiga emulation about two years ago (I'm positive C64 was another subject), and, if I remember it correctly, there was at least one major concern: inability to verify the correct dumps due to the lack of a GoodROM set. As games were distributed on rewritable floppy discs during the time, a slight difference in data could render the run either unverifiable or at all unacceptable as per the dirty SRAM clause.
I'd like to know how the monochrome encodes were done; I didn't see any option in VBjin for this.
Also there were technically 22 games released for VB, albeit fewer than 20 in each region.
BTW I'd like to know who got the idea to use the .vb extension, it runs the risk of users with Visual Basic installed double-clicking them and watching Visual Basic or Visual Studio launch and then show gibberish.
Joined: 11/4/2007
Posts: 1772
Location: Australia, Victoria
I noticed this too, wouldn't it make more sense for the extension to be something like .vby instead? It's not the most elegant solution, but it works... either way, the damage has been done now.
This run coloured a dinosaur. Pale green. From watching.
The appeal of this run is basically a gimmick. Not that that has ever stopped us from publishing. The game isn't too bad, either. But I'd like an explanation about the coins after the first boss, too. Standing around idly looks bad.
not only that, certain copy protection mechanisms relied on the disk controller reading different data each time it passed over a sector. The .IDF format can handle that, but as a result it's non-deterministic. It's also closed source. Useless.
Pretty much the only thing that runs on standard .ADF are cracked versions with suspicious intros, and you know we don't want to use those. Very few games went without disk-based copy protection; those usually required entering some words from the manual or something.
There is already a Commodore 64 emulator with Tools coded in. It just hasnt been accepted by TASvideos.
I liked the run. The music was pretty catchy, and the pacing was great.
Yes Vote!
My first language is not English, so please excuse myself if I write something wrong. I'll do my best do write as cleary as I can, so cope with me here =)
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Why does it have to be limited to three characters? The three-character-extension limitation was removed from PC systems... what? Something like 15 years ago? Why do we have to stick with it in 2010?
I disagree. This game is very well made and it doesn't need its 3D gimmick to be entertaining.
I didn't watch it all the way through yet, but I'm voting yes because it was fast paced and entertaining to me. Congratulations for the first VB TAS, adelikat!
My first language is not English, so please excuse myself if I write something wrong. I'll do my best do write as cleary as I can, so cope with me here =)
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Well, I vote yes on this due to entertaining gameplay and very tight tasing
On a side note, I would like this game to have the option to be viewed in the B&W monochrome video sgrunt posted as an alternative.
I was actually surprised to see that the game was good - or looked good, at least - having never really looked into the virtual boy before.
The problem with making a monochrome encode is, of course, that neither the left nor right version is particularly special - which do you decide to use?
I have (many) issues with the platform itself. Considering there were less than 20 games released . Can you convince me of 3-4 other games that are worth TASing?
So wait, TASing is available on this platform, a TAS is submitted, encoded, etc. But, because there aren't 'sufficient' TASes available for the platform, this shouldn't be accepted? I fail to see the logic there.
I should remind you that Wario World is by far the best game on Virtual Boy and it's distinctly average at best. What do you think that implies about other games for the system? In order to justify accepting a new emu on the site there should at least be several games for the system that get people excited.
In order to justify accepting a new emu on the site there should at least be several games for the system that get people excited.
I don't see why that is necessary. I think it's actually a good thing to represent less common systems if the game(s) are good. The emulator has already been modified for TASing, so it would just be a waste to throw out that progress at this point. Wearing 3-D glasses to view a TAS is pretty novel.
In order to justify accepting a new emu on the site there should at least be several games for the system that get people excited.
Why? .......
Sage advice from a friend of Jim: So put your tinfoil hat back in the closet, open your eyes to the truth, and realize that the government is in fact causing austismal cancer with it's 9/11 fluoride vaccinations of your water supply.
Mitjitsu, why are you arguing about a new category? It already have a emulator capable of doing TASes for the system, even based of a already accepted emulator. I simply don't get it.
I mean, someone already had the trouble of putting the emulator together.
Even then, I believe TASes for Neo Geo Pocket and Wonderswan are allowed in this site, due to Mednafen magical emulation powers. They should be banned too?
My first language is not English, so please excuse myself if I write something wrong. I'll do my best do write as cleary as I can, so cope with me here =)
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I should remind you that Wario World is by far the best game on Virtual Boy and it's distinctly average at best. What do you think that implies about other games for the system? In order to justify accepting a new emu on the site there should at least be several games for the system that get people excited.
I would be interested in understanding what is it that you are arguing here.
Are you saying that this run should not be published because Virtual Boy has only 20 games published? Are you saying that the already-existing emulator should not be accepted as a valid emulator for the same reason? What? I don't really get it. Could you please explain?